The army reservist labelled the ”primary torturer” of Abu Ghraib was convicted by a military jury on Friday of abusing Iraqi prisoners after a trial the Pentagon hopes will cleanse the reputation of the US military.
After deliberating for less than five hours, the jury of four officers and six enlisted men found Specialist Charles Graner guilty on nine of 10 charges of maltreatment, assault and dereliction of duty — charges with a maximum sentence of 15 years.
For the Pentagon, the verdict from the tribunal at Fort Hood army base in Texas could prove instrumental in its efforts to ease the United States’s conscience and soothe the wrath of the Arab world about the abuses at the Iraqi prison.
The decision also supports the contention of the Bush administration that the photographs of naked and cowering Iraqi detainees that emerged from the prison last spring were the work of a small band of rogue soldiers.
Graner was already linked indelibly in the public mind with the most searing images from Abu Ghraib: the burly figure giving a thumbs-up sign over a pyramid of naked Iraqi detainees. He was also associated with another image that came to symbolise the abuse: the photograph of his lover, Private Lynndie England, holding a dog leash around the neck of a naked prisoner.
”What we have here is plain abuse, no doubt about it. There is no justification,” prosecutor Captain Chris Graveline told the jury on Friday in the prosecution’s final argument. ”It is for sport, it is for laughs. He sends it back home by e-mail for laughs.”
”Fortunately, he does not have the final word on the abuse at Abu Ghraib. You do, and it will speak volumes.”
During the five-day proceedings, the prosecution set out a compelling case that the reservist was the ringleader of the abuse.
Graner was described by fellow soldiers and former detainees as a brutal sadist who whistled as he administered beatings — to the point that he broke chairs or damaged his own hand — and threw prisoners’ rations into the toilet.
The court was told Graner forced Iraqi prisoners to masturbate and simulate oral sex, and that he took photographs of a woman prisoner after forcing her to show her breasts.
In the Alpha Tier One cellblock where the abuse captured in the damning photographs took place in November 2003, Graner was described as a mesmerising force. He conducted affairs with at least two women — including England, with whom he fathered a son. Even those soldiers who testified against him regarded him as an attractive personality.
That bravado accompanied Graner throughout the trial. Despite the case being built against him, the burly reservist with the heavily lidded blue eyes remained defiant and outwardly upbeat. On Friday, he showed no visible reaction as the verdict was read.
His defence pursued two lines of argument: that the reservist was merely following orders, and that the human pyramid and dog leash were reasonable control techniques, learned during Graner’s civilian career as a prison guard.
”Cheerleaders all over America make pyramids,” Graner’s lawyer told the jury in his opening remarks. ”It’s not torture.”
The defence also spoke of a jail where CIA and military intelligence were assigned ”quotas” for interrogation, and guards would be recruited to ”soften up” detainees. The specifics were often left vague. Prisoners were stripped naked, dumped under freezing showers and denied sleep and food, the court was told.
However, that line of defence faltered after Judge James Pohl narrowed the scope of testimony available to Graner’s lawyers. The other element of the defence strategy collapsed after it emerged that Graner had repeatedly flouted orders to wear a regulation army haircut, or cease customising his uniform.
In the end, however, Graner probably did the most damage to his own defence by his belated decision not to testify.
”In a case where you are saying that you are acting obedient to orders, you create a problem for yourself when you are unwilling to testify,” said Eugene Fidell, a prominent military attorney in Washington.
Jury deliberations on the sentence were expected to continue into Saturday.
Four others implicated in the Abu Ghraib scandal have already pleaded guilty. — Guardian Unlimited Â